Alix Higgins has always viewed fashion as a dialogue between intimacy and experimentation — digital prints and diaristic texts set against fluid silhouettes and unabashed emotion. But for the designer’s AFW 25 collection, something shifted. “I wanted to make something folk,” he says. “Something bohemian, free-spirited, playful.” The result is an intimate, elevated body of work shaped by the birth of his friends’ children, the music of Florence and the Machine and Mitski, and the act of dressing up as a form of soft rebellion.
Featuring silk chiffons, wool suiting, painted portraits, and even crowns, the collection marks both a deepening and a lightening — a step toward international expansion with one foot still firmly planted in the imagination. “The tension this year is between the future and folk,” Higgins says. “Trying to do something handcrafted, softer and slower, but still with my digital approach.”
Photograph courtesy of Alix Higgins.
Photograph courtesy of Alix Higgins.
Subscribe
Want more T Australia? Subscribe to the magazine and receive a bonus issue
What does your AFW 25 collection say about where your brand is right now — and where it’s headed next?
I go into every collection trying to challenge myself to elevate the brand, and the output, into something more luxury. This collection is more refined in terms of a material palette than in the past works – it’s predominantly silks and wool – silk chiffons, jacquards, wool suiting and jerseys. This feels elevated to me. I am heading to Paris to host a showroom in June to wholesale my brand for the first time internationally and so this global positioning was really front of mind whilst working on this collection.
Can you describe the moment or mood that first sparked the concept for this season?
I wanted to make something folk – something bohemian, free spirited, playful. I was listening to lots of Florence and the Machine, Mitski, Laura Marling. Three close friends of mine had children in the last year, and I was thinking a lot about this relationship between mothers and children – a tenderness, a care, but also this playfulness in world building, dress-ups, painting faces, fantasy. So hopefully this mood of joy, play, freedom comes through.
Photograph courtesy of Alix Higgins.
Photograph courtesy of Alix Higgins.
Were there any particular materials, silhouettes, or motifs you found yourself returning to? Why do you think they resonated this time?
It’s always an evolution, for me. So this season there are some references to previous work of mine. The ruffle jersey tank tops of last season are reinterpreted as silk chiffon ruffle neck blouses in mint green, purple and burgundy. These are my favourite pieces from the show.
Photograph courtesy of Alix Higgins.
Subscribe
Want more T Australia? Subscribe to the magazine and receive a bonus issue
Who are you designing for this season? Has that imagined wearer changed or stayed consistent over time?
It’s always been about designing for my friends. However since opening my first physical retail store in October I’ve gotten a closer sense of what people respond to and are looking for from me – so I think the vision of the woman and the man in my brand has become more defined.
Are there any collaborators, references, or personal rituals that played a meaningful role in the development of this show?
Fashion is often about dualities — structure and softness, tradition and disruption. What tensions are you exploring in this body of work?
The tension this year is between the future and folk, for me. Trying to do something handcrafted, softer and slower, but still with my digital approach.
Photograph courtesy of Alix Higgins.
How do you balance trend-awareness with a sense of enduring identity in your collections?
I don’t think about trend at all.
What’s one detail from this show — a gesture, a stitch, a soundtrack choice — that you hope doesn’t go unnoticed?
The soundtrack is a really beautiful, rich soundscape made by my friend Joan Banoit. I wrote a poem and then we asked a bunch of friends to record it, with which he made this frenetic layered track. It then develops into a few folk feeling songs that are so beautiful.
And finally, what does showing at Australian Fashion Week mean to you, especially in a global fashion landscape?
Lee Mathews – cast by my friend and collaborator Chloé Corkran is looking to be exciting.
Photograph courtesy of Alix Higgins.
